Rise of Linux totally unstoppable, IBM says

Deborah Magid, who works in the software division of IBM and liases with venture capitalists, said: "I've watched our use of open source grow and I agree it's totally unstoppable. A lot of people wonder why we feel that way about open source, but in 1995 we shed our proprietary mindset. We supported Java because it was a portable platform, and Linux was attractive to us for the same reason". And, she said, the use of Linux is growing.

The move in industry and governments is enormous, with China, with Russia, with the UK government, with companies like Morgan Stanley. About a dozen countries are now looking at Linux on the desktop, she said.

And so we asked whether IBM intends to move away from Windows inside the organization.

She said: "There's been a move away from traditional desktops per se. We've moved a lot of our own internal applications even off Lotus to the Web. We have a corporate licence with Microsoft right now".

So she sort of answered the question.

Other panelists, including representatives from Trolltech, SuSE Linux, and MySQL's CEO, Marten Mickos, commented on the SCO legal claims.

Eireik Chambe-Eng of Trolltech, said: "The SCO case is like a speed bump in the history of Linux and something which will strengthen Linux. It brings focus on IP and I think that's a good thing. SCO has a very bad case, it doesn't seem like they have a case at all. It's difficult to understand why they'd be playing the way they're playing if they had a good case".

Canopy was TrollTech's first investor, and they've continued to invest in it. SCO has about five per cent shares in TrollTech.

He said: "In terms of the desktop, Microsoft's major lock in is the file format. The proprietary file formats are hard to reverse engineer. It's pretty incredible that one company controls the way we exchange and read documents. I'm surprised there hasn't been more focus on this in the mainstream press".

Juergen Geck, CTO of SuSE Linux, said: "When you go through the list of potential outcomes of the SCO case, you find Linux coming out stronger. I'm tempted to think that we're lucky to have SCO as a contender in that game. In all the history of Linux it's the first case to come up".

Martin Mikos, CEO of MySQL, said: "Open Source is an inevitable rising tide and there's nothing that's going to stop it. Open Source is the only way to get back to basics where you serve your customers, fix the bugs and don't punish them with compulsory updates".

"Customers and governments will have to trust the software and the only way to do it is to show the source code, not just 90%. It's like AIDS testing, you can't say you've tested just 90% of blood".